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bash on Windows is real–not a VM

I have talked to a few folks recently, and they still don’t believe bash on Windows (RS1) is ‘real’ and think it some kind of a VM. No it is not. It is the ‘real’ user mode running on Windows. It is not Cygwin, and it is not a VM. It is essentially all of the user mode (I.e. Linux without the kernel).

The kernel in this case is a wrapper around the NT kernel that translates the Linux commands to Windows and then things run. As far as Linux is concerned, its the same code and doesn’t have any changes). Technically this is called Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

On windows, this is installed in the user space; so each user get their own instance effectively which is isolated from the other users. Once you install it (and if you are still reading this, then you probably know how to install it), then this shows up under C:\Users\your-user-ID\AppData\Local\lxss. If you can’t find that folder, you can still type it and navigate to it. Below is a screen shot on what this looks like:

It is a little interesting and been mucking around this. Here is you can see the installation of gcc:

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Amit Bahree

This blog is my personal blog and while it does reflect my experiences in my professional life, this is just my thoughts. Most of the entries are technical though sometimes they can vary from the wacky to even political – however that is quite rare.
Quite often, I have been asked what’s up with the “gibberish” and the funny title of the blog? Some people even going the extra step to say that, this is a virus that infected their system (ahem) well. [:D] It actually is quite simple, and if you have still not figured out then check out this link – whats in a name?
View all posts by Amit Bahree